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Ten More Tips: How To Become A Sought After Speaker and Make Your Business THRIVE! with Caterina Rando

Caterina Rando organizes her inspiring and helpful talk around ten points, which she will send to you as a PDF if you give her your business card (see tip #1 below). But during her presentation I collected plenty more than ten useful tips to steer my future career as a sought-after speaker. Since you can probably get hold of her official list of ten tips by writing to her, I’ll share some notes that fell outside her organized presentation outline but still impressed me.

1. Everybody loves a handy handout, and Caterina knows it. She leverages this information to collect the contacts sitting in her workshop, saying, “I am trying to be more green so give me your email address, and I’m going to send you the handouts plus a special gift.” She hands a box around the room for us to fill with our business cards. Shazam, she’s got your number and a reason to send you email. Brilliant.

2. She speaks to audience members who’ve arrived early before her presentation begins, which makes her more approachable, provides her information about her audience, and cultivates especially attentive audience members.

3. Invite potential clients to hear you speak–impress them with your audience and your performance.

5. “The more you do it, the easier it gets, until you do it with ease.”

6. If there’s a microphone—use it!

7. Caterina expresses and exemplifies a great consciousness about quality of voice for public speaking.

8. Required business owner qualities:

certainty (ahs and ums undermine this)

enthusiasm

positivity

9. Caterina does this thing where she coaches her audience to breathe. I wonder what her cue is for this—her own mood, or the audience’s, or some planned transition. Whatever the cue, it works to keep us relaxed and focused.

10. Image: wear a (light) jacket, or any “3rd piece.”

Caterina’s a charmer and a real professional. I’m inclined to do what she says and wear the light-colored jacket no matter how hot it gets talking about Sexy Grammar.

Last week, entrepreneurs nationwide celebrated Small Business Week, and San Francisco marked the occasion with several fantastic events including the Small Business Conference, more than 30 workshops to help small business owners succeed. This week, I offer my notes and inspiration from the four fabulous workshops I attended: